


1,023 Days on Earth

by cosmic_llin



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Community: where_no_woman, Episode Related, Female Character of Color, Gen, Historical, Pre-Canon, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guinan had never heard of Earth until she crashed on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1,023 Days on Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/gifts).



> This expands on elements of Guinan's back story seen in the episode Time's Arrow, and has minor spoilers for that episode.
> 
> Many thanks to carawj for the beta.

  
__  
Day One   
  


She hadn't even _heard_ of Earth, much less been aiming for it. Or at least, she hadn't been aiming for it until it became clear that, with the state that her engines were in, she'd have to aim for the nearest habitable planet or she'd soon be not much more than cosmic dust.

The ship was barely more than a shuttle really, and a used one at that. She was borrowing it. Borrowing without permission. It wasn't the same as stealing if it was from your own father, and he had others, anyway.

He probably wasn't going to want this one back, now, she thought, as she used what little power remained to wrestle the little ship onto more-or-less a landing course, towards the darkened northern continent. Hopefully if she landed at night, there would be less chance of being spotted by the indigenous population. She'd be in all sorts of trouble if she interfered with their development. People were always telling her, but then she'd never been the best listener.

It was a pretty rough crash, in the end. She came away with bruises, and the ship was beyond repair. She burned out her phaser vaporising the pieces so that nobody would find them.

'You've done it now,' she said aloud when she was finished, tucking the spent phaser inside her torn flight jacket in case there was any chance of recharging it.

With nothing but the clothes she wore and no idea what else to do, she started walking across the bare plain.

 

__  
Day Eight   


She'd told them to call her Guinan. It wasn't quite her name, but it was close enough. And anyway it didn't really matter what people called you if they were only yelling down the kitchen at you to fetch more cabbages or hurry up washing the dishes because there were customers waiting.

People had looked oddly at her flight suit and her forward manner, but she was a talker and a persuader, and it hadn't been hard to convince someone to give her a job. And they let her sleep in the kitchen where it was warm, and she could help herself to as many leftovers as she wanted. Once she'd bought some cheap clothes that would help her blend in better, she started to save her money. She wasn't sure what for – no chance of buying passage off the planet when nobody even had a space ship yet, but money talked all over the galaxy.

And she worked. Her father would have been surprised, but she was a hard worker, when she put her mind to it. Within a week she knew every inch of that kitchen and the others were taking orders from her.

 

  
__  
Day Thirty-Nine   
  


'It was fun while it lasted,' Guinan said cheerfully to her colleagues as they watched her gather her few things.

She'd been fired. For hitting a customer. She wouldn't have, but she'd picked up enough Earth culture to know that the name he'd called her was pretty offensive. Not that it mattered as she wasn't even Human, let alone a member of the people he was denigrating, but it was a matter of principle.

She waved goodbye to the others as she left the kitchen with her belongings on her back, and then she was out in the fresh air, a free agent again. She had money now. Not a lot, but enough, for someone like her who could talk her way into, or out of, pretty much anything.

 

__  
Day Forty-Two   


She had decided to buy a train ticket, but she had no idea where she ought to go. So she told the man at the ticket booth that she wanted to go as far west as she could on the money she had. She wanted to see some of this planet she'd found herself on.

 

  
__  
Day Forty-Four   
  


America, as she'd learned it was called, seemed to be a vast country. On the trains, she travelled through dusty plains where there seemed to be no sentient beings for miles around. She got to know the other passengers, heard their stories, learned everything she could about their ways. She was beginning to see what the others had meant about listening.

 

__  
Day Forty-Five   


'I'm sorry,' Guinan said. 'It seems that trouble follows me wherever I go.'

'Please don't apologise,' said the train driver, and behind him the bank manager nodded vigorously. 'We should be thanking you. You've done us a great service.'

'I only did what anyone would have done,' said Guinan, modestly. 'It just happened that it was me.'

Privately she was a little surprised that nobody else had even bothered to try and stop the train robbers, but then they'd had some very large guns, and anyway it was fine because she was used to doing things by herself. She wasn't entirely sure how the American legal system worked, but the sheriff who had taken them away seemed to think a custodial sentence would be in order.

She accepted the offer of free train tickets graciously. She wasn't ready to stop just yet.

 

  
__  
Day Ninety-Four   
  


You learned the most interesting things travelling, Guinan had always thought. For instance, delivering a baby in a runaway mail coach was not as difficult as one might at first imagine.

 

  
__  
Day One Hundred and Seventeen   
  


It appeared that El-Aurians were not susceptible to cholera, which was a relief. They were glad of her at the hospital, where the beds were so close together that you could barely get between them, and the air was thick with the smell of too many people suffering.

They hadn't employed her, nobody knew where she had come from, or thought to ask. She did everything – washed the bedding and mopped the floors and talked to the patients who were afraid or lonely or just interesting. She would tell the children about her Tarkassian razor beast – it was safe to say things to the children, the little ones at least, because who would listen to them but Guinan?

 

  
__  
Day Eight Hundred and Twelve   
  


Guinan didn't look back at the hospital when she left, although she felt bad about it. She liked helping people but she had never wanted to be in medicine, and now she knew why. She had seen too much.

She still had a little money that she had scraped together, here and there. She wanted some new clothes, ones that didn't smell like the hospital even when she washed them over and over. And she wanted to be somewhere far away. And she wanted to have some fun, and forget about things. She wanted an adventure.

 

__  
Day Eight Hundred and Twenty-Seven   


She hadn't figured out yet how she was going to pay for the hotel, but that was a minor detail, not worth worrying about. At least she had the sort of clothes now that would make people pay attention to her. And she'd bought a couple of newspapers and was a little closer to working out the sort of people whose attention she would like to court.

There was a literary salon going on in the hotel that day. A very exclusive affair, the maid had assured her. Guinan had got pretty close to the maid already, and knew all kinds of things about her – mostly about her kids, but quite a lot of useful things about the day-to-day running of the hotel.

Anyway, she liked writers – she liked people who could imagine, and not just pay attention. So she made up her mind to sneak into the reception.

In the end it was easier than she had thought it would be – it wasn't that the Humans weren't bright, but they were easily dazzled by a confident manner. And to be fair, she had a little help.

'Don't you know who I am?' she demanded of the unfortunate lackey who was taking the invitations at the door.

'Well, of course I do, Mrs Guinan, ma'am, I've seen you in the hotel every day,' he said. 'But you don't seem to have an invitation?'

She sighed. 'Why do you think I came to this hotel?' she asked. 'If not to attend this salon? Do you think someone of my renown would _not_ have an invitation?'

'Well, no, but, I...'

She frowned, her mind working. He was unexpectedly brave. She had thought that he would give up almost immediately. A tricky one.

'Young man, what on Earth do you think you are doing?' asked the whiskered gentleman who had been just inside the door, filling his pipe. 'I never imagined I'd see the famed Madam Guinan forced to wait outside such an illustrious gathering! Stupid boy! Come along, my dear Guinan, and tell me, how have you been?'

And he pulled her briskly into the room, while the poor young man called 'sorry, Mr Clemens!' behind them.

'I would have gotten in without your help,' Guinan said, under her breath.

'I'm sure you would have, but it pains me to see a lady in distress,' he said. 'And you seem like you might be more entertaining that most of the people here.'

'This is probably true,' Guinan conceded.

 

  
__  
Day Nine Hundred and Sixty-Two   
  


She hadn't expected to become a celebrity, but she was enjoying it. She wondered what her acquaintances in the literary circles of the United States would think, if they knew where she had come from.

Money, lodgings and entertainment were never a problem, these days. Invitations arrived almost daily. She was paid embarrassing amounts just to appear at things. It was odd but flattering.

As much money as she could, she sent to the cholera hospital.

 

__  
Day Nine Hundred and Seventy-Five   


She cleared out Data's hotel room, when he had gone. Mr Clemens had wanted to do it but she insisted that the technology there should be handled by someone with the proper experience.

Once she had the transceiver, she wasn't sure what to do with it. It would take only some minor adjustments to use it to send a distress call – but then she wasn't especially in distress.

She talked to Mr Clemens about it, one afternoon, while they took tea in the latest of a string of expensive hotels.

'It seems to me that there's no question about it,' he said. 'Earth's the most appalling place. Why would you stay here when you could go somewhere else?'

'It is pretty appalling,' Guinan conceded. 'But you know... I've grown quite fond of it.'

'And it has grown fond of you,' he said. 'But you don't belong here, Guinan.'

'But what's belonging?' she asked. 'What does it matter, really, where I belong?'

She thought about it for a long while. She had a place, here on Earth. She was respected, she was loved. She had, if not close friends, acquaintances who amused her and were kind to her. She was settled, she was happy, she was reasonably safe – something she had not expected to be when she had crash-landed all those hundreds of days ago.

That was what decided her, in the end. She had never wanted respect, or safety. She wanted excitement.

That night, she activated the distress call.

 

  
__  
Day One Thousand and Twenty-Three   
  


Someone had heard her message. A passing freighter, on its way to Vulcan. They were in a hurry, though. She didn't pack anything, there was nothing from her life on Earth that she would need again, nothing material anyway.

There wasn't even time to say goodbye. Mr Clemens would guess where she had gone and handle her affairs, if there was anything to handle. To everyone else, she would simply disappear. They would forget about her soon enough, it was the way of things.

She thought she might come back, someday.


End file.
